


The Here and Now

by wordswordswords7



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: BAMF Ginny Weasley, BAMF Hermione Granger, F/F, Hermione returns to school, POV Hermione Granger, PTSD, Post-Battle of Hogwarts
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-11-25
Updated: 2018-11-24
Packaged: 2019-08-29 00:07:36
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,226
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16733253
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/wordswordswords7/pseuds/wordswordswords7
Summary: Hermione returns to Hogwarts to graduate, and finds herself sharing in the trauma of the Final Battle with old friends. With Harry and Ron opting to forego another year of school, her time is mostly spent with Ginny Weasley and Neville Longbottom as they try to navigate the aftermath of the previous year.





	The Here and Now

The Gryffindor Common Room was comfortably quiet, and I relished the small window of privacy before the other students came up from the Sorting Ceremony. I had opted out of the feast, wanting the cozy dorms to myself for one last night. Honestly though, it was more about the sense of anonymity that would vanish forever the minute any of my classmates saw me. Not that I was the only returning student to have fought in the battle, but the Daily Prophet had ran little else but Golden Trio headlines for months. I wasn’t sure I could handle walking into the Great Hall to my peers wondering which stories about me had been true and which had been lies. That bloody paper had hardly let me rest all summer with its dogged reporters and damn exposés. It was almost like being back in fourth year with all that Rita Skeeter nonsense, only now I felt far less like laughing it all off. 

With the approval of Professor McGonagall—now Headmistress—I had arrived at the castle almost a full month early, partially to escape the Daily Prophet but also to catch my bearings in private before the other students returned. Most of the time had been spent wandering the grounds or visiting the surviving house elves in the kitchens. Meal times had been shared with the professors as they slowly trickled in from their own summers spent healing. I found it strangely comfortable to sit amongst these wizened adults, and it had struck me early on how none of them seemed to consider me a child any longer, much less one of the students. 

Now, as I heard the excited chatter of people on the other side of the Fat Lady’s portrait, I rose from the plushy couch Ron, Harry and I had so often coveted, and made a beeline to the room tucked behind the stairwell leading to the girls’ dormitory. I pushed open the door and slipped into the single instead of the standard 4-bed dorm that I was used to.

I hadn’t requested it, but Professor McGonagall had assigned it to me nonetheless. I hadn’t asked for an explanation, finding myself grateful for the privacy. Normally the Head Girl would have taken it, but it was my understanding that a Ravenclaw had gotten the job this year. Oh, how I would have once been so jealous to be overlooked for the position. These days, the thought of being Head Girl seemed trivial, even childish. My values and ambitions had so changed in the months spent hunting horcruxes with Harry and Ron, that I was having quite the time figuring out who I even was these days. 

At least now I could do that soul searching in the quiet of a private dorm. It was fairly small, but had room enough for a four-post bed, a desk, bookcase and wardrobe. My view from Gryffindor Tower overlooked the lake where, on clear days, I could see the Giant Squid’s great shadow gliding beneath the water’s surface. Crookshanks seemed to approve of the space, having commandeered the windowsill (and the view) for himself. 

The castle and the grounds seemed smaller somehow, and I didn’t think I could blame it on the repairs done after the Final Battle. To be entirely honest, nothing looked all that altered so much as I felt the differences. Hogwarts was just as it had ever been – old and dusty as if it had been standing unscathed for centuries instead of in varying piles of rubble only months before. A part of me was curious about the magic that had ensured such an impressive architectural recovery. On the other hand, I was significantly traumatized by the entire ordeal to prefer not knowing. 

Ron and Harry thought I was crazy for coming back to graduate at all. 

“What could that lot teach you in one year that you don’t already know?” Ron had pressed, the look of discomfort clear on his face. I had cut him some slack by not replying, knowing that for Ron the school held memories of Fred and of death. My determination to go back must have seemed morbid to him. 

Harry had been more understanding, saying kindly, “If it’s about being qualified, Hermione, I doubt there’s a witch or wizard who wouldn’t hire you on the spot these days.”

They had both been wrong, of course. It wasn’t about missing out on lessons (though I knew I still had a world of things to learn), or about feeling unemployable. I had already been approached with job offers at the Ministry, despite my age. No, this was about taking back a piece of myself that had been stolen. So much of my life had been lost to Voldemort and his following, not least of which were the memories of my parents, the loss of dear friends, and the sullying of the place I use to consider a second home. And while I couldn’t bring back the dead, nor was I currently able to undo the spells I’d cast to protect my family, I was determined to take Hogwarts back. 

I wanted to make it feel like home again, rather than the graveyard Ron considered it to be. 

“Nice digs.”

I jumped and spun around to see Ginny leaning casually in the doorway, arms folded over her chest. She had already changed out of her uniform robes and into shorts and an old t-shirt that I recognized as one of Harry’s.

“Come in,” I said, sitting on the bed and offering the desk chair to the redhead. 

Ginny shut the door and sat down beside me instead. “You missed a riveting dinner.”

I picked at the bedspread idly as she flopped back against the mattress, the waves of her flaming hair cascading over the edge of the bed. “I wasn’t really up for the show.”

“I thought I was going to have a heart attack walking through those front doors tonight,” she said quietly, as though she hadn’t heard me. “I keep wondering if Ron was right about coming back here. Maybe this place is just too full of death to be…to be what Hogwarts was before.”

I looked over at Ginny, the worried frown pulling at the corners of her mouth and slowly lowered myself down beside her. We lay there in silence for a while, staring at the ceiling, before she turned on her side to look at me. I turned my head to face her.

“Did we make a mistake, Hermione?”

“What happened at dinner?” I asked gently in lieu of an answer. 

She sighed. “The Great Hall, it was…it felt so empty. Last year it was because of the pureblood statuses, but this year it’s because people are dead or –”

“Or can’t bring themselves to come back,” I said when she faltered. 

She nodded. “There were hardly any new students to Sort. I think parents are still afraid to send their children here. And the ones that did come, even the younger ones who were sent away from the battle – they wouldn’t stop staring at those of us that fought.”

I thought about Neville, who I knew had returned for a victory run of his final year. Evidently, he had felt he hadn’t gotten a useful education under Snape and the Carrows. I wondered idly if we were crazy for being the only two seventh years from our House to return. Admittedly I wasn’t well acquainted with many of the younger students, save those who had once been members of the D.A. And my memories of who had fought in the battle were sporadic and hazy at best. Sometimes a moment I’d forgotten entirely would creep back by way of a nightmare, so most days I tried to forget the details of the fight altogether in hopes that my dreaming hours would be spared. 

“What did you think of the new professors?” I asked to interrupt my own train of thought.

She gave a small shrug and yawned. “They seem alright. But the bar’s been set pretty low, so as long as they aren’t crazed murderers or pathological liars you’ll have to excuse me if my hopes aren’t too high.”

I smiled a little. “I’ve met most of them—they’re actually quite nice.”

She pressed one of my pillows to her face and smothered a loud groan before I pulled it away. “Have you honestly been hanging out with professors for the past month?”

She had meant it lightly but any fool could have seen she’d been worried about me here. I had left her, Ron and the other Weasleys behind at the Burrow. I had left Harry behind in London as well as my parents, with their new lives in Australian. I could see she thought I was running, and maybe I was. But a month away from my friends had ultimately been something of a catharsis. With the castle mostly to myself I had been free to breakdown as hard and as often as needed. And with the professors and the house elves to visit I hadn’t been entirely alone.

I was spared answering her by a knock on the door.

“Come in!” 

Neville poked his head in. “There you are. McGonagall gave you a single too, huh?”

So he’d gotten the Head Boy room.

“Makes sense, I suppose,” I replied as he sat in the chair. “We are the only returning seventh years from Gryffindor.”

“Couldn’t convince Harry and Ron, eh?” he said with a hollow laugh. 

Ron had been absolutely obstinate on the subject, but Harry had waffled some. In the end he had confided to me that classes, essays, and tests just seemed so small compared with what we’d been through. The heavy look in his eye had made me stop pressing. I had left him behind at 12 Grimmauld Place where we had both been living, and it worried me to have him there alone. But shortly after arriving at Hogwarts, Ron had written to say he was planning on moving in to keep Harry company. I wondered if perhaps he’d found the mourning in the Burrow stifling.

“They’re taking some much needed R&R,” I replied, keenly aware that we all deserved it.

Neville nodded and we sat in a kind of lost silence. Finally, the exasperated voice of a prefect sending first years to bed broke our reverie. 

“S’pose I ought to call it a night,” Neville sighed. “See you at breakfast.”

We said goodnight and he shut the door behind him. Ginny didn’t seem keen on leaving, and then I remembered that two of her roommates had not survived the Battle. The third had lost both her Muggle-born parents to the Death Eaters’ blood purge and had opted not to return for her final year. 

How strange to lose the people you’d lived with for six years of your life so suddenly. The thought was a passing one, but it struck me abruptly that I was in the same boat as Ginny. Lavender Brown was dead, Parvati Patil had not returned, and Fay Dunbar had gone missing like so many other Muggle-born witches and wizards.

“Who are you rooming with?” I asked tentatively.

Ginny sighed. “Rita Salvatore, Fern MacIver, and Daisy Wilkes.”

She didn’t sound thrilled. For my part, I found myself a little perturbed by the fact that I couldn’t remember the faces of any of the girls she had named.

Ginny must have read it in my expression. “You’d know them if you saw them. They’re not exactly standouts, and they never joined the D.A. “

“We live in a tower Ginny, and not a very big one. You’d think I’d know the people who’ve been living in it almost as long as I have.”

She didn’t seem too concerned by my poor memory, and began counting on her fingers. “To be fair, you were sort of preoccupied being petrified, travelling through time, evading and saving an accused murderer, keeping Harry alive in the Triwizard Tournament, fighting Death Eaters, helping to train a secret army, searching for a way to defeat a fascist tyrant, and remaining at the top of your class. “

“Well when you put it like that,” I say, slightly appalled. “We really had zero supervision, didn’t we? But who needs an adult when you’ve got Harry Potter, I suppose.”

Ginny rolled her eyes. “Harry and Ron is who, but they had you which I imagine was a sight better.”

Groaning, she stood up and made her way to the door, but seemed to falter there. “See you at breakfast, I guess.”

I bit my lip, not really wanting her to go. “Listen, if the new dorm mates drive you round the bend, you’re more than welcome to crash here some nights.”

It would set the rumor mill ablaze, but I couldn’t help but offer. Ginny looked so dejected. And we’d spent so many summers bunked up in her room at the Burrow, that we were used to sharing a room and even a bed. And I had to admit that , privacy or no, having the room to myself felt strange after six years of sharing with three other girls.

She gave me a rueful smile and tossed her ginger hair over her shoulder. “Like you could keep me away.”


End file.
